I can’t feel too much disappointment about the Chelsea defeat really. Chelsea are where they are for a good reason, their squad is one of the most expensive in the League and they are led by a very shrewd and experienced manager. If you want to beat Chelsea this season you need a near perfect performance from your side with a minimum number of mistakes plus some luck on top of that and maybe also Chelsea having a bad day at the office at the same time. Too much to ask really and all academic as soon as we made those costly mistakes gifting them their goals.
Teams like Chelsea don’t need written invitations when presented with goalscoring opportunities like this, they pounce, they perform, they punish, calm, cold-blooded, clinical, it’s what they do.
The 1:2 scoreline doesn’t quite reflect that it was very much men against boys on the night, we had as much possession as we did because Chelsea allowed that to happen and because they pretty well knew that we lacked the kind of pace needed to be a hazard to them, pardon the pun. Chelsea have more hazards than just Hazard. That’s the problem here.
The game simply showed the gulf that exists between a small elite group of clubs and the rest making up the numbers, merely jogging along, quite literally. Just playing in a massive stadium, especially if you only rent it, doesn’t really change matters in that respect. It also doesn’t miraculously make players want to play for West Ham, there are other factors which are much more at the forefront of players’ minds than the stadium they play in. West Ham over the last 12 months had to learn this the hard way it seems…
I actually wanted to focus on a lot of positives coming out during the last few days in terms of West Ham United. The best news from my point of view is that Bilic will sign a contract extension soon. It appears to be just a rolling contract rather than a five year deal, but we all know that long term deals don’t prevent a club hierarchy from sacking a manager two months later if need be. It also doesn’t really force a manager to stay put despite getting more attractive offers from bigger clubs.
As you know I consider Bilic to be pretty much a perfect fit for our club. Don’t confuse this with me saying Bilic is the perfect manager, he is not, he has his flaws, he makes mistakes. And he still needs more experience (which comes with making said mistakes and learning from them). But he is a person oozing class and charisma. As a manager he continues to learn and he clearly loves West Ham.
A love which is being reciprocated tenfold by the vast majority of our fanbase.
As a manager he is not the finished article yet, in truth very few managers are and they do already have jobs at big clubs paying them a fortune anyway, so I am more than happy to see Bilic at the helm of West Ham for the next two seasons at least.
There have also been rumours of contract extensions including better terms for both Antonio and Obiang. It’s all they deserve really and while I am not as naive to think this will be enough to fend off the interest from the vultures at bigger clubs come the summer, at least it is an expression of acknowledgment from our board of those players’ contributions to our performances this season.
It’s all you can do as club owners in order to keep players happy really and persuade them to stay at West Ham rather than riding the bench at Chelsea or Man United.
Oh yes, there actually is another thing you can do: Add some quality in the summer by signing proper players that significantly and immediately improve the team.
That costs money obviously and if, as Mark Noble claimed after the final game at the Boleyn, the club is indeed no longer being run like a circus, then our transfer dealings need to change significantly:
a) Don’t announce to all and sundry how much money is in the transfer kitty.
b) Don’t announce your targets publicly until the moment they have changed their status from target to new signing, holding up the shirt as West Ham players, grinning from ear to ear on the OS.
c) Go for realistic targets you actually have a chance of signing, not guys who will only sign for clubs playing CL football. Don’t waste time on pie in the sky players.
d) Make realistic offers if you are really interested in signing someone. Don’t make a lowball offer that only insults both the player and the selling club. You can haggle for a leather jacket on a Turkish street market. You cannot haggle in the same manner for a player of Premier League standard.
On another note there will be a lot of Rice on the menu at Rush Green in the coming years, Declan Rice that is. The young Irish defender has signed a new deal that will keep him at the club until 2020. I cannot claim to have seen him play a lot obviously, only on the rare occasions when I have had the pleasure to see our development squad play.
But he already was on the bench for our first team for our Boxing Day win against Swansea. He also has captained the U23 side which also says a lot about the development of the player.
Of course there can be no guarantees. Declan’s best position is CB and in first team terms there are Reid, Ogbonna, Fonte and Collins ahead of him in the pecking order.
Plus other young prospects like Oxford and Burke. So Rice will have an uphill struggle to force his way into the side. But if he has what it takes it’s going to happen eventually. Another plus is his versatility. From what I’ve read he can also play as a holding midfielder and is a decent taker of set pieces. It’ll be exciting to see his progression in the near future.
As for the progression of our club in general it really boils down to what the owners do, starting with the upcoming transfer window. Will there be a real statement of intent in the summer or more business as usual ? Good quality signings and highly rated prospects or more dodgy loan deals/players taken from the scrapheap of other clubs?
Like many others I ordered the DVD of “Iron Men”, the docudrama portraying some West Ham characters and diehard fans throughout our final Boleyn season.
I can’t wait to watch it in full, but the trailer already gave away a fascinating quote from Karren Brady:
For our supporters this is a church, a holy place. It’s a huge responsibility to take that away from them.
That quote bears massive significance as it shows that the board was very aware of what Upton Park means to the fans. Some will say the very fact we moved to London Stadium which isn’t a football stadium at all shows that the board failed in terms of taking responsibility.
Others will be a bit more patient, give us a bit more time to settle in the new surroundings. I can live with this compromise of a stadium as long as it’s balanced out by a squad worthy of playing in a 60k or even 66k stadium where the pitch is as far removed from the first row of seats as it is. We’ve gone from a very beloved smallish church with rusty old charme to a giant but somewhat cold and artificial cathedral.
To stay in the picture I now want one hell of a priest exciting the crowd, sorry, congregation from his pulpit with some outstanding performances. Plus a great choir with silky voices, praising the footballing gods by singing glorious hymns that will make the people come back for more time and time again.
The Boleyn is almost gone now and we will never play there again. The London Stadium will change and evolve over time, but will it ever be a proper football stadium?
I’m not convinced we will still see the same stadium there in 40 or 50 years and I doubt the running track will stay much longer than 10 years. But if we are to remain in a massive stadium such as this the owners need to deliver in terms of the quality of players wearing the West Ham shirt.
Our club has changed almost beyond recognition as it is. The board have taken the deliberate decision to take away the holy place from the fans. They really need to get their act together now. Otherwise the London Stadium will be a holy place for an entirely different reason than the Boleyn was. The London Stadium could be holy as there may soon be plenty of holes of unsold seats throughout the stadium if we continue to field midtable teams.
We didn’t make this move to be midtable. We didn’t make the move to tread water. The summer will be crucial. It’ll tell us a lot about the owners. COYI!